Comic Books and M&Ms
by StrawberryFields4EverAndAlways
Summary: A three-section look at what happened to Rat Kiley after he shot himself in the foot and ultimately went home. Rated for language.


HOMECOMING

There would be no ticker tape parades. No hero's welcome. Not for Rat Kiley. Flying home from Japan, the kid absentmindedly stroked the spine of a comic book and stared out the airplane's window, wondering what it would be like to come home. After his time in Vietnam, it seemed almost as if America wasn't even there anymore, as if the jungles and the death and the bugs were the only possible reality. Maybe Leesburg, Virginia no longer existed, and it was just a world of Vietnam out there.

Nevertheless, Rat found himself imagining the reception he would receive at the airport. His mom would cry and laugh all at once. His dad would shout across the terminal in his great booming voice that he was proud of him. His little brother Max would smile up at him respectfully, like he was a wise old man, even though Rat had only just turned twenty. And then he would start towards them, bags in hand, and all of their faces would fall as they saw the limp.

When you shoot yourself in the foot, it doesn't turn out so well for the foot. In Rat's case, when he shot, the round when clean through, shattering a few tarsals and shredding muscle and connective tissue along the way. Feet don't take kindly to such abuse, and despite their best efforts, the doctors in Japan couldn't do a whole lot. They patched it up as best they could, but the foot was still a mess, and when given the choice, Rat would favor the other one. But the limp he'd given himself wasn't so bad he needed a cane or anything. It was just strong enough to be noticeable, a little jolting movement in each step.

Rat's father did not say he was proud of him. On the contrary, Paul Kiley figured out the truth straight away, despite the letter from Lt. Jimmy Cross that insisted the injury was an accident. "I ran up Omaha Beach," he said, "I know what war looks like, and what a coward's wound looks like." A lot of the time, Rat couldn't stand to be in the house with his father, the disappointment was so palpable.

"Why don't you go into medical school?" his mother asked him, "That was always your plan, you know, before it all." She had no idea. She didn't have a clue of what had happened to him in Vietnam. To be a medic in a war zone is no picnic by any means, and he was still trying to stop himself from imagining the people around him with blown-off limbs. The last thing he wanted to do with his life was to be a doctor. He had nothing else, but he would never stop looking for an alternative.

%%%%%%%%

_NIGHTMARE_

_He walks through the mountains with the guys, playing around with Curt. "Catch this!" Curt laughs, tossing another smoke grenade at him. It goes off in his face, and, coughing and laughing at the same time, he says, "You…dumb…fucking…yellow mother." Tiny pinpricks of sunlight dapple the forest floor, through the thick canopy of jungle foliage. The trees have little white blossoms strewn throughout. There is a single patch of sunlight that is bigger than the rest. Curt steps into it, and everything goes into slow motion. Curt looks over his shoulder at him, grinning. "Go to Hell, Kiley!" Rat vaguely registers a light clicking sound, and Curt is flying, the sun taking him for its own. Rat stumbles backward and shuts his eyes._

_When he opens them, he asks Ted Lavender how the war is going. Before he can respond with his usual "We're having a nice mellow war today," there is a sharp crack and Lavender lurches forward, his eyes still glazed over in a drug induced stupor. Nearby, for some reason, Lee Strunk sits on the ground and tries to feel a leg that is no longer there. Rat shuts his eyes, as if this will change the outcome._

_Again, he opens his eyes, and Kiowa shows him a rain dance. And Rat asks him, "Where's the rain?" Kiowa looks right at him and says, "The earth is slow, but the buffalo is patient." And the slow earth swallows Kiowa._

_Rat looks over from where Kiowa vanished and there is the patient buffalo, lying pathetically on its side. It has been mangled by bullets, but its big black eyes still hold a little bit of life. The life draws him in, closer and closer, and then he's falling into the endless blackness of its eyes and Rat's reliving the nightlife._

_He can't even see his hand in front of his face. As he moves forward through the dark, he hears Henry Dobbins and Norman Bowker, who are tied together up ahead, singing "Mr. Tambourine Man" in a quiet effort to keep each other awake. But Rat isn't listening to them, because he hears the bugs. They are faint at first and off in the distance, but they come closer to him from all sides. And then they are there, eating away at him, buzzing in a deafening roar, with both insect sounds and human voices- those of Curt, Kiowa, Lavender, and Strunk along with dozens of nameless youths he'd seen die. The insects, the dead boys, Vietnam itself, all eat him alive._

And he wakes up screaming, crying, drenched with sweat.

%%%%%%

DUMB COOZE

For his first three months back home, Rat Kiley had an obsession and one day, he decided to pursue it. With a couple sets of clothes and his toothbrush in a small valise, he got in his car one day and drove south towards Pensacola, Florida. He knew the address; he'd sent a letter there more than a year before.

The house was small and rough, with rocking chairs on the front porch and palm trees in the yard. It felt to Rat like the sort of place where his buddy Curt Lemon would have grown up. He limped right up to the front door and knocked.

A young cooze answered. She had blonde hair and had gray eyes, just like Curt had. A cute face, a nice body, a floral cotton dress. "Hello," she said, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Can I help you?"

"Are you the dumb cooze who never wrote back?"

She just stared at him for a long time, biting her lip, and then said, "_Dear Beth Lemon,_

_My name is Robert James Kiley, and I was lucky enough to call your brother Curt my best friend. If I may, I'd like to tell you that you had the best brother in the whole world. He was a great soldier and an even better pal..." _Curt's sister looked at her feet.

"So you got it," Rat said, "But why didn't you write back?"

Beth Lemon picked up her purse from a table just inside the door, opened it, and extracted an envelope marked with very familiar handwriting. She took out the four sheets of paper, and looked over them as she said, "I tried. I really did, hundreds of times. Nothing felt right. You were able to put Curt into words so well, I didn't feel like anything I could do would ever match up."

Rat still wasn't impressed. "Thank you, but you could have at least sent a letter that acknowledged my existence."

Beth looked Rat in the eyes again, and she was crying. "I'm sorry. I really wanted to, but I. Couldn't. Do. It." She was silent a moment as tears streamed down her cheeks. "You can talk about how much you miss Curt. I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't."

Rat stared at her, and knew she couldn't be lying. This was real. Without really thinking about it, Rat stepped across the space between them and hugged Curt's sister. To his surprise, Beth didn't push him away, but hugged him back with her head on his chest. One of his hands absentmindedly smoothed down her hair.

Beth stepped back, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. "I'm being an idiot, sorry."

"You're not," Rat said quietly, and after a pause, he held out a small brown bag. "M&M?"

Instead of taking the candy, Curt Lemon's sister got close again and kissed him. Rat's brain was only able to register something along the lines of "Holy shit!" before he succumbed to the moment and kissed Beth back. The thing about life is that it takes you down paths you would never have guessed, and Rat was quite willing to see where this one would go.


End file.
